Effluent's Not a Dirty Word

WASTEWATER WETLANDS

Everything about the setting this late afternoon suggests bucolic harmony. Cattails at water's edge capture the saffron glow of fading October light. Offshore, a squadron of shoveler ducks, alarmed, swims rapidly toward tall grasses growing along the fringe of a small island, fanshaped wakes spreading behind them. Overhead, a hawk drifts downwind into the light of the westering sun then settles silently upon the uppermost branch of a pine snag a half-mile across the pond. In the loose soil underfoot, I recognize the tracks of elk and wild turkeys; other signs show where deer came at dawn to drink. And perhaps the gray fox, deer mice, and great blue herons. The ponds, identified by a small wooden sign as Jacques Marsh, lie in a swale, descending south to north, so that water flows from one pond into the next. The plants bulrushes, duck potato, wild rice, millet, cattails, buckwheat furnish shelter and food for the animals that either live here or come to drink and forage. Black bears, king snakes, pintail ducks, even occasional cormorants, ospreys, bald eagles a rich and varied wildlife population. What could be more natural? But looking closely, I see that the soft ground underfoot is a berm, shoved into place by earth-moving machines to outline the contours of the pond. That many of the plants growing at pond's edge are nonnatives, reared in a nursery and planted here. That this lovely pastoral scene is entirely man-made. That even the water is imported, as my guide, Phil Hayes, explains, flowing into the ponds from a discharge pipe at the Pinetop-Lakeside Wastewater Treatment Plant, about a mile south of here.

To the casual observer, these scenes of flowing water, luxuriant flora, and abundant wildlife offer no hint that Mother Nature is only partially responsible for their existence. (PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 14 AND 15) Double-crested cormorants nest in a snag at an effluent marsh development. (COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) Pintail Lake near Show Low. A tiger salamander. Tucson's purified effluent is dumped into the Santa Cruz River. This green-backed beron, photographed by Annette Cordano, doesn't mind who created its habitat.

Hayes' interest in water begins at a point where the rest of us lose interest, after it spirals down the drain out of sight, out of mind. It's the job of wastewater-treatment plant operators like Hayes to clean the water we flush away, so it can be recycled. If the water is to be reused as surface waters, in marshlands for instance, it must meet federal and state standards. Hayes does his job so well that Jacques Marsh tests cleaner than water samples taken from nearby lakes and streams.

The water coming out of the PinetopLakeside plant has been treated in two stages. The first stage is mechanical. Machines grind solids into smaller bits and remove nonbiodegradable materials, such as cinders, plastic, and rubber. What's left is pumped into an aeration ditch where swarms of bacteria greedily consume the organic solids.

In the second stage, the water is pumped into clarifiers to remove sludge from the mix and return it to the aeration ditch for the bacteria to chew on some more. What the bacteria don't consume is compressed, dried, and carted away for disposal.

"In a way, we're running a bacteria farm here," says Hayes. "One of the things we have to do is keep them healthy." After the bacteria have done their work, the water gets a small dose of chlorine and is sent on its way to the marsh.

According to Hayes, the entire process, treating approximately one million gallons of wastewater, takes 24 hours.

As supplies of fresh water are depleted, recycling sewage water to use in industry and power plants, to recharge groundwater-even to drink is essential. Denver,

Colorado, for example, has a small-scale facility that demonstrates wastewater can be cleaned up for potable uses. Some communities prefer to reuse wastewater to create wetlands - a term that encompasseses marshes, swamps, ponds, and bogs. One reason is that marshes, ponds, bogs - cienegas, as they are called in the Southwest - are natural water-purification systems, a fact long known to biologists. As a graduate student in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, biologist John Snyder, PinetopLakeside Sanitary District manager, studied this phenomenon. “The City of Calumet was running raw sewage into a marsh that emptied into a trout stream. We never figured out how it was done, exactly, but the water that ran out of the marsh was clean.” Although the precise combination of biological ingredients at work to clean up water in a marsh or pond is hard to pin down, we know a lot about how wetlands practice their mysterious alchemy. While slowing the flow of water, aquatic plants filter and absorb sediments, organic matter, and chemicals into their own tissues. And the roots and stems of marsh plants support a large and diverse population of bacteria that take up dissolved nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous and feed on suspended organic solids.

The delicate balance of Nature gets an assist from the use of effluent in marshes, riverbeds, and swamps. (COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM OPPOSITE PAGE TOP) A sunset is the backdrop for the flight of a dragonfly. Wildlife biologists sample pond water to monitor invertebrates. Flowerheads with stiff-hooked bracts identify this teasel plant. A snowy egret, photographed by Annette Cordano, thrives in its created home.

One very popular wastewater wetland is the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary in Arcata, California, where more than 50 acres of landfill adjacent to Humboldt Bay were converted into three freshwater marshes and a recreational lake. Originally intended as a third level of wastewater treatment, where secondary effluent would be further "polished" to remove nitrogen and phosphorous dregs, the Arcata Marsh has become since 1986 a celebrated wildlife sanctuary. Annually, more than 100,000 tourists visit the marsh, many unaware that these pristine waters were raw sewage only a few hours before. Thousands of ducks and shorebirds and more than 200 species of other birds have found a haven here. Thanks to the marsh, Arcata, a coastal community 280 miles north of San Francisco, is famous throughout the world.

Although in its infancy compared with Arcata, Jacques Marsh is nonetheless an innovative use of treated effluent. Designed as a series of seven interconnected ponds, the marsh, when full, will contain 185 acres of wetlands habitat. Today, only two ponds are full, but, in three to five years, when all seven are full, surplus flows will restore a wet meadow on the north side of the marsh, where year-round water will flow through an emerging gallery of cottonwoods and willows. Jacques Marsh is one of two wastewaterwetlands projects in Arizona's Navajo County, the other being the 104-acre Pintail Lake-Redhead Marsh complex outside Show Low, where observation decks and wildlife-viewing blinds have been installed. Both marshes are the result of cooperation among sanitary districts, the Arizona Department of Game and Fish, and the Forest Service. A number of other Arizona communities either have plans for or have studied the feasibility of constructing wastewater wetlands. In Sedona and Sierra Vista, for example, local chapters of the Audubon Society, whose members value wetlands as wildlife habitat, have been campaigning to raise support for wetlands construction.

Even when marshes or ponds are created unintentionally, plants, animals, and birds find them. The premier bird-watching spot in Tucson is a 40-acre effluent pond north of the Roger Road Treatment Plant. Every day, bird lovers arrive early, sign the guest register, and head for the pond. Upon leaving, they log in the names of birds spotted. The day I visited, the list contained brown creeper, red-breasted nuthatch, red-necked phalarope, blacknecked stilt, Cooper's hawk, and night heron, among others. Six years ago, the banks of the Santa Cruz River north of Tucson were scoured clean by heavy flooding. Nothing grew. Travel north along the Santa Cruz today, though, and see the miracle that perennial water has wrought. Healthy young willows

Randall sees the Avra Valley wetlands as restoration of a habitat that was formerly a prominent natural feature of the Sonoran Desert before marshes were drained for agriculture and the water table drawn down by groundwater pumping.

Early Spanish explorers charted 50 separate cienega springs in Arizona, and luxuriant canopies of cottonwood-willow gallery forests once grew along Arizona's major desert rivers. Today only 15 cienegas and approximately 20 cottonwood-willow forests remain, none of them extensive. Between 90 and 95 percent of our original wetland-riparian zones are gone.

We lose more than water when we lose wetlands and riparian habitats. We lose Nature's built-in ability to control floods and purify water. We lose recreational sites. We lose habitat for wildlife, some already threatened or endangered. We lose beauty. Jacques and Pintail marshes prove that reusing our wastewater is a way to get some of that back.

Tom Dollar writes frequently on the environment and is particularly interested in water conservation. He also contributed the profile on Joseph Wood Krutch in this issue.

Marty Cordano is an officer of the Huachuca Audubon Society and a former U.S. Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologist.